2.4.2
Knowledge needs to be shared once acquired in order to maximise the benefits that can be derived from it. It is, therefore imperative that this study considers the concept of knowledge sharing (Hooven, 2013). Knowledge sharing is particularly important for organisations to cultivate because the world is operating in a knowledge based economy where knowledge is applied for productivity in the same way that capital was applied during the capitalist
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economy (Drucker, 1993; Ramarajan, 2016). In addition to this, knowledge enables organisations to achieve competitiveness (Gordon et al in Morey et al, 2002).
According to Yeh et al, (2010), knowledge sharing behaviour in planning a strategic initiative influences the planning quality and effect of the initiative. However, stakeholders in an organisation have different professional knowledge and power which they regard as personal to them and can interfere with their willingness to share knowledge. It has, however,been proven that where such knowledge is shared, the quality of a project improves significantly. How this works is explained in Figure 6 below.
Figure 6 Planning and knowledge sharing (source Yeh at al, 2011)
While knowledge sharing is important for all people currently working in an organisation (knowledge sharing), of equal importance is the need to ensure that knowledge is passed on from employees as individuals move on to different roles or leave the organisation (knowledge transfer). This fact is important because the era where information is power is gone and now information should be readily available to all who need it. The more information is accessible to staff in an organisation, the more innovative they become and on the other hand if information is readily made available to customers, the competence of the organisation also improves (Kandadi, 2006). As discussed in 2.4.1 above, knowledge can either be tacit or explicit. Given this fact, the manner in which these two different types of knowledge are shared and transferred differ in that tacit knowledge is the more subjective knowledge held by individuals and is more difficult to transfer while explicit knowledge is contained in documents, systems or as part of the organisational culture (Benton et al, 2006). Wisdom and intuition is a form of tacit knowledge that needs to be regarded if full exploitation of knowledge is to be realised (Emery, 1994). Intellectual Capital, borne by individuals in organisations, is also a key asset to managing in a knowledge organisation (Curado, 2008). The challenge of transfer of tacit knowledge and wisdom and intuition has been tackled in studies by Allee, (1997); Herholdt at al, (2006); Mahesh and Suresh, (2006);
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Oguz and Sengun; (2010;) Acar et al, (2010) and Jakubik, (2010). Sharing of knowledge can be done using technology such a salesforce can help store, transfer and share explicit knowledge and it may be converted to good business use using tacit knowledge of each business owner (Hooven, 2013). The use of technology in disseminating information introduces complexity to the job of the staff in the organisation and as the complexity of knowledge required increases, the type of employees required in an organisation also begins to change and calls for more knowledge workers (Davison, Liang, Ou and Zhong, 2010).
The type of knowledge shared and transferred in this particular study is the knowledge for, from and about customers. The staff members dealing with higher level customers particularly those in the private banking and commercial banking segments are usually those highly trained staff with deep knowledge in both banking and CRM. The ensuing discussion will take a closer look at this type of employee.
a) CRM, the knowledge worker and communities of practise
According to Drucker (1993), the knowledge worker is key given that the world is now operating in a knowledge economy where knowledge has now become an economic resource. For the knowledge worker, the substance of work is not driven by the product but by the process. In other words, as the production system becomes more specialised, the demand for informational labour capable of handling and creating new knowledge increases and the space for traditional work that can be replaced by automation reduces (Pyoria, 2005).
While no clear definition of the knowledge worker has been universally accepted, there are some themes that relate to the knowledge worker which are widely accepted and these are include a high level of education and skills as well as the use of information technology as an integral part of the informational labour. However, use of technology on its own is not enough, knowledge has to be deployed intellectually with flexibility, inter-disciplinary cooperation and rapid learning in order to use knowledge creatively (Pyoria, 2005).
Table 4 below describes the notion of traditional and knowledge work and how it can be distinguished by characteristics such as the education levels, the skills one would require to do the job, the nature of the work, the organisation as well as the medium of work. As illustrated in Table 4, the more complex and higher level the education, skills and nature of work are the more it becomes knowledge work. In terms of the nature of the organisation, a self-managing team with symbols and/or people being used as a medium of work, the more likely it is to be knowledge work. As stated earlier on, the nature of work at SBM requires
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knowledge workers and the type of employees at SBM have an implication on what they know and how they share it for purposes of improving CRM for profitability.
Table 4 The Ideal types of traditional work and knowledge work (source: :Pyoria, 2005) The Ideal types of traditional work and knowledge work
Traditional work knowledge work
Education Requires some formal education and on-the-job
learning
Requires extensive formal
education and continuous on-the- job learning
Skills Strictly defined skills Transferable skills
The nature of
work
High level of standardization, involves working with physical matter either directly or indirectly through electronic interfaces (e.g control of production processes)
Low level of standardization,
involves working with abstract knowledge and symbols (e.g. design and planning of production processes)
Organisation Ranges from bureaucracy to teams, fixed roles
and positions, knowledge as a secondary production factor
Ranges from professional
bureaucracies to self-managing teams, job and task circulation, knowledge as a primary production factor.
The medium of work
Physical materials and/or people Symbols and/or people
Knowledge workers in the same field can benefit from each other if they share knowledge about their specific area of expertise (Davison et al, 2010). Lave and Wenger (1991), Wenger and Snyder (2000), Chu and Khosla (2012) agree that “communities of practice” (CoP) are beneficial to an organisation that is seeking to harness the knowledge of its workforce and for bringing innovation. Synder et al, (2000) argue that learning takes place within a framework of participation rather than in individual minds.
In addition to this, Chu and Khosla, (2012) argue that IT enabled knowledge hub for knowledge workers enhances the innovation for an organisation even more. In the process of knowledge sharing within a CoP, an individual not only learns about a practice but becomes a practitioner conforming to a common set of implicit and explicit rules, regulations and a shared way of thinking. CoP’s are good for putting together people in the same profession/job with a view to providing a forum for them to share best practice. This is where people are allowed to form networks and interact outside of the formal organisational structure. The fact that CoPs do not follow the formal organisational structure means that they span across geographies, business divisions, professions and organisations. Sales,
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customer service and problem solving are some of the areas that have benefitted immensely from CoPs. It is usually better not to formalise CoPs but to leave them as self-governing because formalising them restricts their freedom to share informally and unprompted (Wenger and Snyder, 2000).
Staff, for purposes of this research, are considered to be knowledge workers. The term knowledge workers is defined by Wenger and Snyder (2000), as individuals who produce value for an organisation through their knowledge. These can be IT specialists, executives, management or any individual with specialised skills. In the case of this study, the heads of the business segments, the relationship managers, branch sales and service teams, the supporting teams across customer channels and business process improvement and IT as well as operations teams at SBM are the knowledge workers referred to. The Japanese consider all employees in a production line a knowledge worker because there is a form of tacit knowledge required even for the most routine of jobs (Davison et al, 2010). Having created, shared, transferred knowledge through knowledge workers and communities of practise, it is imperative that the knowledge be stored in such a manner that it can easily be retrieved.
b) Knowledge storage
Storage strategies should be aligned with business needs. At Ernest and Young; an audit firm, codification strategy makes sense as users can easily access information for better access to past audit documents produced and knowledge contained in a system while at Bolton Consulting Group; a consulting firm, personalisation makes sense as the knowledge is specific to individuals and gives better collaboration for the work produced by the different consultants (Smith, 2004). There are a myriad of tools that are available that enable the storage of knowledge and that make it easier for knowledge to be retrieved and shared especially among dispersed organisations. How knowledge is stored is very critical to how it is then retrieved and transferred (Jasimuddin, 2005).
This chapter has so far defined knowledge as well as knowledge management, broken down the different components of knowledge management and how these relate to CRM. The components of knowledge discussed so far are relevant to the study in that the relationship between KM and CRM has been established; the cultural context of knowledge is understood and this study will a Japanese approach to knowledge with emphasis on tacit knowledge and will use mainly knowledge workers as well as communities of practise to achieve the aim and objectives of the study. KM and CRM are no longer viewed as mutually exclusive but as complementary given that knowledge about and for the customer can be held by an organisation and deployed for profitable use. The exact nature of how this can be
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deployed is the subject matter of this study (Gerbert et al, 2002 ; Maroofi and Dehghani (2013). At this point, it is important to go deeper into the different types of knowledge that can be acquired in relation to the customer before exploring how the two subjects can be brought together and deployed in order to increase profitability.
Moreover, KM needs to be understood as a process that incorporates; Knowledge for customers, Knowledge from customers and Knowledge about customers (Alryalat et al, 2008).